Warren Snowdon (Lingiari, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Northern Australia and Indigenous Affairs) Share this | Hansard source

Minister Brough, I am happy for you to respond when it is your opportunity. He stated that the joint NT-federal contribution, however, was more like $1.9 million. Wadeye elders said that there would be no need for intervention if only the Northern Territory and federal governments met their obligations. Data unearthed through the Senate estimates process reveals that tens of millions of dollars spent administering trial programs under the umbrella of COAG in many instances outgun the value of the project. I referred to a case in Tasmania where administering a $34,318 program cost the Australian community $327,784 in administrative expenses. If we listen to the rhetoric, we are led to believe that millions, indeed billions, of dollars have been thrown down the chute after Indigenous affairs. What we know, constantly of course, is that a lot of this money never meets its destination, and we need to be very concerned about that.

The government came into power with a hard-edged and very clear-cut agenda to rid itself of the very last vestiges of Labor’s approach to Indigenous affairs. It shrugged away any semblance of a bipartisan approach. From day one, the government has pursued its agenda to reshape the Indigenous affairs policy landscape in its own image, with a single-minded ideological commitment. ATSIC was the first to feel the blowtorch when it was ordered to make across-the-board cuts under the first Costello budget.

These cuts, not coincidentally, had the greatest impact on programs dealing with family violence and the support of young people. Indeed, it is a matter of some concern that, in the 1995-96 ATSIC budget, $30.3 million was spent on community and youth support, including the Family Violence Intervention Program. This program funded 37 women’s centres, four men’s programs, 15 children’s services, 70 services for youth activities and youth bail accommodation, nine family support and violence intervention programs, the night patrol project in Katherine and a women’s crisis centre serving 20 communities in New South Wales. In March 1997, the community and youth component ended as a result of budget cuts to ATSIC in the 1996-97 budget.

We have seen the horrific results of family violence and sexual abuse in Indigenous communities highlighted over recent days. We as a community will not, and should not, tolerate the excesses that have been perpetrated upon Indigenous women and children by some males. But Indigenous Australians deserve a great deal more respect in this conversation we are having about them—not with them—than they are currently receiving. Whilst ATSIC may have had significant flaws, its abolition by the government—and I have not come here to either praise or bury ATSIC—has left Indigenous Australians without a nationally representative structure, and indeed, without a national voice. Its so-called replacement, the National Indigenous Council, comprises a group of people who do not represent anyone, who are not responsible to anyone and who are not accountable to anyone. Yet they purport to give the primary source of advice to the government on Indigenous affairs.

During ATSIC’s lifespan the issue of sexual abuse and family violence was repeatedly raised by commissioners. Indeed, one of those commissioners, Alison Anderson, now a member of the Northern Territory Legislative Assembly for the seat of Macdonnell, raised the issues with the Prime Minister himself as a member of his task force in 2003. Report after report has made recommendations that have been shelved and all but ignored. The pleas and cries of women in the Indigenous community have not been listened to by this government.

The minister has visited Central Australia and Northern Australia on a number of occasions. In 1979 and 1980 I was working with an Indigenous community in the Pitjantjatjara homelands of South Australia to put forward a proposition to the government to fund a petrol sniffing program—the first petrol sniffing program to be funded by the Commonwealth. Despite repeated requests for recurrent funding by Indigenous families across Central and Northern Australia for diversionary programs to deal with petrol sniffing and alcohol abuse, the programs have not been funded appropriately. Now we are having visited upon us the stark reality of what happens in communities which suffer from excessive substance abuse. Violence against women and families has followed.

I am happy to acknowledge, as someone who has lived and worked in these communities for many years, that we should have a far greater understanding than is currently being exhibited about issues to do with customary law and how they impact upon the community. As a nation we need to better understand and address the issues at the heart of the problem. To do this, we must first look, listen and learn. I say to the Minister for Families, Community Services and Indigenous Affairs, who is at the table: I am pleased that he has taken the interest he has. If I can do anything to assist in his understanding of Indigenous issues across Northern Australia and Australia generally I would be happy to do so. If there is any way I can assist him to sit down with communities so that he might understand what their issues are, rather than have those issues told to him by others, I would be glad to do so.

I know from Indigenous Australians who live in my electorate—around 40 per cent of my constituents are Indigenous Australians—that they hanker for an engagement with the community about the issues which have been publicised so highly lately. They need to be understood. They want you to sit down with them and not talk about them, but talk to them. They want you to understand that they have concerns about the issues which have been raised publicly. They also have solutions to some of these issues. They understand the need for a high school education. It is worth noting in passing that until 2001 no Aboriginal kid living in a bush community in the Northern Territory could get to a high school, pass high school and get his or her year 12 certificate in their home community. That was because of 24 years of indolence and direct policy failure by successive conservative CLP administrations since 1978. It is only since the ALP was elected to the government in the Northern Territory that there has been any effort to provide secondary education for kids in the bush.

There are between 3,000 and 5,000 young Territorians who have had no access to high school education. These are young people who, if they could get a job, would never have the skills for it. These are young people who do not even have the skills to be able to access the training they require to get a job. We cannot blame these people. There is no point accusing them. We have to understand their plight and sit down and work with them. The minister and others have been to Wadeye, and I have talked already about the COAG trial at Wadeye. What the community there have been telling me, and telling governments for many years, is that they require a new form of housing, setting up what are effectively subdivisions for some time. They have already set up one. This would decentralise the community. They have been after this for some years. It has been part of the COAG discussion, but it has not hit the table.

Whilst the government has a predilection for trying to ensure that every Indigenous Australian, wherever they live and whatever their circumstances, is a private home owner, it ain’t going to happen. Welfare housing is extremely important, and the public sector has a significant role. There is already a housing deficit of around $1.2 billion in the Northern Territory alone, and around $2.5 billion across Australia. We need to address these issues, and we need to address them together. I say to the minister: ‘Let’s sit down and talk about targets and goals. Let’s talk about what might be achievable to redress the balance. Let’s talk about the things that can be done to ensure that Indigenous Australians have the same opportunities as the rest of us. Let’s understand that attacking their rights is not the answer. Let’s recognise that they have rights as Australian citizens—the same rights as every other Australian citizen—which need to be funded by government.’

I am aware that the government is proposing significant changes to the CDEP. Some of them are probably worth while, but others are totally misguided. Again, I am happy to enter a dialogue with the government—I am sure my colleagues on this side of the House are too—to see how we can get more effective changes than the ones which have been proposed by the government.

Recently in the Australian of 26 May Patrick Dodson referred to the 1997 report Bringing them home. He said the report:

... highlighted the infringement of UN definition of Genocide and called for a National apology and compensation to those Aboriginal people who had suffered under these valid laws for the destruction of Aboriginal societies and the sanctioning of the biogenetic modification of Aboriginal people.

He said:

... despite the horrors exposed in the report as a nation we proved incapable of confronting our past and dealing with its consequences. That failure alone should have been seen as condemned for a lack of courage and a denial of justice.

…         …         …

Undoubtedly—

he said—

some of our politicians see these outcomes as a sustaining of the natural order of the dominant society and its institutions. However there are others ... who understand that the unjust assertion of the power of one section of society over a less powerful group will ... diminish us as a nation ...

I say, ‘Hear, hear’ to that. What I say to the minister is: let’s walk together down this path. Let’s walk together in a bipartisan way to improve the lot of Indigenous Australians for the benefit of us all.

See this speech in context